


Get in the Bag

by QM_Vox



Category: Monster Hunter (Video Games)
Genre: Ancient Forest (Monster Hunter), Blood and Injury, Coral Highlands (Monster Hunter), F/F, Hunting, Monster Hunters, Monsters, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25302850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QM_Vox/pseuds/QM_Vox
Summary: Long-Arm Jaq and her friend Morgan bet on who has the harder job in and around Astera
Kudos: 6





	Get in the Bag

Five fleets and at least a few folks deciding to home-grow new people, and Astera was still small enough that most everyone knew everyone else by sight and by name. But even if they didn’t, there was no mistaking Long-Arm Jaq and her Bag.

The Bag was Jaq’s pride and joy, and the tool with which she did her job. It was, at its heart, a capture wagon, meant for hauling subdued monsters back to Astera or the mobile Research Base for study. Jaq had built the wide-bottomed wagon herself, working with the engineers to design its adjustable restraints, craft the muzzles and weights used to restrain the beasts the A-listers brought in, and to keep it the sort of tough, all-terrain transportation her duties required. The sign with its name on it, nailed to the rear of the Bag with spikes as thick as her wrists, Jaq carved herself.   
  
As a support hunter, A-listers and handlers were used to seeing Jaq returning back to Astera with one or more monsters chained to the Bag, sweaty but unharmed. They were not used to seeing her just outside of Astera, her precious Bag slathered in blood, swearing and growling while she and her palico team scrubbed it down. All of them periodically looked up when they heard wingdrakes swooping in to drop off members of the field teams, though not at the hunters walking back into the front gate from the Ancient Forest.

They gave Jaq a wide berth too. People usually said the Bag was too grim for someone as friendly as Jaq, but not today. Something about seeing what was theoretically a non-combatant slathered in blood and mad enough to spit thorns suggested that today was not the day to be on Long-Arm Jaq’s last nerve. 

“She’d better come back,” Jaq said to herself, as she swished her cleaning brush through a bucket of suds. She went back to scrubbing the blood from the wood of her wagon with a renewed fury.

Near sunset, “she” did come back out of the gates of Astera, where Jaq and her crew of cats were resting on the Bag after finally getting it clean. She cut an imposing figure, armored in blood-splattered bone and metal still adorned with the spines and feathers of the beasts she’d had it made from, with a massive, weighty sword across her back whose blade was fringed with teeth harder and sharper than steel. Jaq, already a good four inches shorter, looked like a tiny tanned pixie next to the A-lister, an impression not helped by Jaq’s own white (well, pinkish now, after all that cleaning) armor made from forged insect plates. 

Jaq wasn’t an A-lister, but no hunter worth the name would be caught dead outside of Astera without her armor on, twenty feet from the gate or otherwise.

“Jaq!” the A-lister greeted enthusiastically. “The chef said -”

“That I’d have him grill you rare for my dinner tonight if you didn’t come see me right away? Tell me he quoted me, Morgan. I need to hear that he quoted me precisely.”

Morgan gave Jaq a rueful grin. “He did say that part. He, ah, he also said he’s got a good spice blend for it.”

Jaq and the cats laughed, and made no move to get off of the Bag. “I love that jacked cat, I really do. Yeah, we gotta talk. I just lost a whole day of work to your stupid ass.”

“ _Me_? We haven’t worked together for nearly a week!”

Jaq jabbed a finger to point at her A-lister friend. “Exactly! I’ve been running errands for amateur hour for the last week while _you_ have been snapping up every posting for an elder dragon that crosses the Commission’s sightline. We used to work together so often that they didn’t even _ask_ me to retrieve captures for anyone else, and now look at me. This absolute idiot didn’t dose a barroth right and it woke up halfway back to Astera. We had to beat it down and tranq it again - that came out of my own wages and supplies, Morgan!”

Morgan put a hand on her hip and gave Jaq a _look_. “Woe is you. The Commission provides you with everything you need. You don’t have to go rooting around in dung, picking bugs, checking plants against your field guide so you don’t poison yourself with potions. You’ve got it easy.”  
  
“Easy? _Easy_? You think cleaning up after your serial kidnapping sprees is _easy_? You think anyone here in Astera got picked out for easy work? You’re an inconsiderate ass, y’know that Morgan? You couldn’t do my job for one fucking hunt!”

The palicos jeered, and not Morgan’s glare or her outraged sputter could make them stop.

The A-lister rallied her dignity at length: “You’ve never even _tried_ my job. You have no idea what it’s like. Where do you get off talking shit about my work just because you don’t like working with someone else?”

Jaq slid down in a clatter of metal and carapace and stood in front of her friend, looking up into Morgan’s eyes. “So I’ll try it. I’ll take on a capture, and you man the Bag with my crew. I’ll bet the reward money that you can’t get the wyverns back alive.”

Morgan opened her mouth. She closed her mouth, went to open it again, and finally turned away with a wordless noise of frustration. The words “I can’t let you take that risk” kept coming to her lips and dying there. Support or otherwise, Long-Arm Jaq was a _hunter_ , and there was no version of saying that out loud that their friendship would survive.

So instead she said, “You just said we’re all elite here. Surely the others aren’t as bad as all that?”

“One got me mauled by a pickle, Morgan.”

The A-lister swore under her breath. “Fine, we have a deal. I’ll find a handler to help you out -” she turned and held up a hand, cutting off Jaq’s question ahead of time. “Not my handler. No one should have my handler.”

“Is she really as bad as all that?” Jaq asked; despite all this time, she hadn’t gotten to know Morgan’s handler well.

Morgan sighed. “She got me mauled by a pickle.”

“…Damn.”

* * *

“Hey partner!”

Morgan resisted the overwhelming urge to shed her mortal body and embrace death. The first notes of her handler’s voice, especially first thing in the morning, always inspired it in her, and then grew more tolerable over time. 

“What’s with this assignment that the Research Commission passed my way?” the handler continued, pointing to the contract in her book. “It looks like the support role for an investigation into the Coral Highlands.”

Morgan took a _deep_ breath in. “It is. My friend Long-Arm Jaq is doing the field work on this one. You remember her from -”

“All of your hunts ever! She’s the reason why you’re always yelling ‘get in the Bag’!”

Morgan grinned. “Yeah, that’s Jaq. This time it’s gonna be you and me with the Bag while she does the work. Let me take a look at that contract?”

The initial details didn’t surprise Morgan much; she was to take the Bag and its crew (minus Mao, Jaq’s most senior palico, but with the addition of Morgan’s handler and her own palico Allie) to the Coral Highlands, there to secure and transport a captured tzitzi-ya-ku “as well as any other results of the primary’s hunt”, at the behest of some of the biologists who wanted to track their behavior in the wild. All as expected, but then -

“What’s with this delivery request?” Morgan asked incredulously. “Herbs, slashberries, sleep herbs, assorted mushrooms, ore…”

“Well yeah,” Morgan’s handler said in her permanent tones of enthusiasm (inside, Morgan died a little more). “Support hunters help keep us supplied! They have those big capture wagons anyway, so they gather the raw materials that keep the provisions topped up and ready to serve! Plus stuff for construction, and taking care of the Ancient Tree, snaring new wingdrakes to tame, all of that.”

“I thought - I mean - the _Argosy_ ,” Morgan concluded in bewilderment.

Morgan’s handler scoffed. “How do you think we stayed in supply the whole time it was gone getting the Commander’s Dragonator ready, silly? We’d fall down flat without the support hunters to keep us topped up.”

The pre-hunt meal arrived while Morgan was re-reading the contract; she traced the lines with her finger, so that she could commit them to memory. She and the cats would have to forage the whole way there and back to fulfill this request, in addition to protecting their intended cargo. She and her handler ate, the former absently, the latter with a verve that made her a darling of the chef and his crew.

“Don’t worry about your friend,” the handler encouraged after more than half her plate was gone. “I know _lots_ of support hunters! They’re cool, calculating professionals, she’ll be fine.”

Morgan took a long pull of the beer that came with her meal. “I hope so,” she said. “But I hope not too cool. You can’t hunt…you have to have _some_ passion. Here’s hoping Jaq doesn’t leave all of her mad at home where it can’t help her. Let’s get this moving; if we start now we ought to arrive just as she’s finishing her hunt. Or calling for help.”

* * *

Jaq was getting loaded up.

This wasn’t a new process, not exactly, but in the normal course of things she’d have reloads of certain things available on the Bag, and that was not gonna be the case on today’s hunt. Still, with no obligation to bring back resources for Astera aside from the captured monster, she could afford to be prepared. Dung pod reloads for her slinger went into a pouch at her belt (one went into her slinger; dung needed using sooner rather than later, in Jaq’s experience), potions and the stronger mega potions were arrayed around her belt and pockets strapped to her legs. The bag hunters wryly referred to as their item pouch had the traps needed to capture her quarry, along with tranquilizer bombs, the base tools for trap creation and a pair of thunderbugs (dosed and docile, and thus ready for use).

All of that came free, from Jaq’s allowances as a retained support hunter. Other supplies were more costly. A discussion with the chief melder had managed to net Jaq doses of mega demondrug (there was a hell of a name) and mega armorskin, at the cost of carefully-hoarded materials that the support hunter was not entirely at ease being without. The powercharm she’d finally broke down and bought was a hefty chunk of change as well, several jobs’ worth in fact, but all of the A-listers used them, and Jaq had to admit that the armorcharm clipped to her wrist next to it had served her well for some time.

Still. 

Jaq hesitated over her collection of whetfish scales and then grabbed a supply for her mission. If anything justified using them, an actual hunt had to be it. A knock on the door of her quarters (shared with several other hunters from the Fifth Fleet, given Astera’s ongoing difficulties with floor space) made Jaq turn her head, and then stand up straight; it was the Commander, leaning against the support hunter’s doorway.

“Sir,” Jaq greeted, stowing her scales in her pouch with the trap tools and bombs. “What can I do for you?”

The Commander chuckled. “At ease, Jaq. I heard about your decision to take on a field assignment. It’s important to try new things, broaden your horizons.”

“How did you hear?” Jaq asked.

“Who do you think approved the special request?”

Jaq just sighed and nodded.

“Considering a change in career?” The Commander asked, with a raised eyebrow. “You do great work as a support hunter. You were _handpicked_ for that work, just like every other member of the Fifth Fleet. I know the A-listers seem to get all of the glory, but our work wouldn’t be possible without the dedication and skills of hunters like you.”

Jaq shook her head. “I don’t want the Commission’s appreciation. I want my partner’s.”

“An interesting turn of phrase. Good luck out there with your hunt, Jaq. You’re due to leave soon?”

Jaq nodded. “I just need to settle out my weapons, and read up on the natives of the Coral Highlands again. I know my target isn’t usually considered dangerous, but there’s been reports of pink rathians, plus the way odogarons and pickles - “ Jaq froze mid-sentence, but when she wasn’t reprimanded she continued, “just wander around the place.”

“Among others,” the Commander agreed. “I look forward to reading your report.”

Jaq waited for the Commander to leave before she strapped on her weapon (a one-handed axe and shield, both crafted from great ghirros unfortunate enough to mistake her Bag for a buffet) and double-checked her equipment and flares. Capture flares, to signal Morgan to pick up, and an SOS flare, for help. Some insane part of Jaq’s mind suggested leaving the SOS behind, which her professionalism shouted down. There was taking risks for pride, and then there was suicide by hunt.

Jaq nodded to herself, scooped up her hunting journal to read up in, and started walking the three stories up to the canteen for her pre-hunt meal.

* * *

“She hasn’t even left yet has she,” Morgan said, rather than asked. The A-lister was gathering herbs on the Bag’s way through the Ancient Forest, towards the mountain passes that would eventually let her into the Coral Highlands. It was getting on two in the afternoon.

“Nope!” her handler answered, from where she was harvesting parashrooms. “We’ll probably be in the mountains by the time she leaves. Plenty of time to try and fill those quotas!”

Morgan looked back over at the Bag, well aware that both she and her handler weren’t anywhere close to on track for this. The palicos kept the relatively empty cart moving while Morgan, Allie, and her handler managed to destroy more plant matter than they gathered. “How does she do it?”

“How’s any hunter do anything?” the handler asked with a shrug. “She made her equipment for it, the same way you built yours to hunt. I bet she’s a lot better at this than we are, especially with that bug energy to help her out!”

Morgan nodded to herself and kept moving, staying apace with the Bag between stops to gather.

Then she stopped. 

“Jaq’s wearing that gathering gear to her hunt,” Morgan said, looking at the handler. “She doesn’t know any better.”

The handler shrugged again. “I bet she does, but support hunters don’t bring a lot of kills or captures of their own home. I bet she doesn’t _own_ any other armor.”

Morgan groaned. Her friend was going to get herself killed.

* * *

Long-Arm Jaq hit the ground in the camp at the Coral Highlands, just south of a grove of trees rich with sleep herbs and kelbi. A favorite of Jaq’s, in fact, for filling quotas on those two things. Her handler for the contract, a serious young woman whose usual hunting partner was running a blue streak through the Arena, was already there.

“There are medical supplies in that crate there,” the serious handler advised. “I would suggest that you use them. You’re more expensive than a first-aid brew.”

At Jaq’s knee, her palico partner Mao meowed an agreement. Jaq nodded and took a supply of the first-aid potions, stashing them in a line across her chest, before she brought out her mega demondrug and mega armorskin.

She tried the first straight, and the second while pinching her nose. Both tasted vile, but she could feel them coursing through her body, lending her strength and endurance beyond her means. Carefully, Jaq tucked the empty bottles away and left the camp by the path in the back.

Jaq loved the Highlands more than any other part of the New World. The air was crisp and cold this high up, and scented with countless blooming corals and flowers. She brushed a coralbird with her fingertips on her way past, disturbing the bright red bird’s meal and sending it winging off in surprised offense. Jaq laughed and shook her head before turning her attention to the task at hand: finding tracks for the raptor she was here for.

The support hunter followed a path that sloped vaguely downward, through a collection of hollow, calcified coral shells infested with wide-eyed shamos. The smaller, brightly colored monsters were old hat to Jaq by now; brave in packs, but individually weak. She beat a few down with her shield and watched as the others scattered.

She lost a few minutes carving her kills for their hides and marking them for pickup later. What was left on the bodies belonged to the Commission, if other scavengers didn’t get them first.

A clawed footprint caught her eye. Jaq knelt down to check it, and to give its scent to her scoutflies. The insects shimmered in excitement, and then started after the scent.

“This isn’t so bad,” Long-Arm Jaq said to herself. Mao, next to her, made a noise in his throat, and together the two of them set off.

* * *

“I hate this and I hate everything about it,” Morgan commented, before she leapt from the Bag with her massive greatsword in both hands. The blade came down hard on the green-feathered skull of a pukei-pukei whose tongue was in the herb stash, just between the bird wyvern’s comically bulging eyes. There was a loud, wet _crack_ as its skull fractured, unable to take the sheer force of the blow, and the beast recoiled in outrage and in pain.

Allie put a hand on her meowster’s knee to stop Morgan from giving chase as the pukei-pukei retreated. “We’re on a schedule,” the palico said, with a hint of reproach.

Morgan sighed. “How much of the supplies did that piece of shit eat?”

One of the Bag’s regular crew meowed an answer.

“Fuck me,” Morgan complained. “…If we don’t stop now and range out, we won’t make our quota.”

“If we don’t keep going, we’ll be late!” the handler added. “Your friend might be in trouble. Shame we’re out of those dung pods.”

“ _I am aware_ ,” Morgan said sharply. “I didn’t know the Bag had a compartment for them, alright? I always wondered how Long-Arm Jaq avoided fighting everything on her way to and from and now I know. Please stop bringing it up.”

Allie meowed to get Morgan’s attention. “What would you like us to do?”

Morgan looked up at the mountains, still off in the distance for all that they were having to push the Bag up and down hills now. 

“Jaq’s a hunter,” she said at last. “We’re gonna have to trust her to do her job.”

“Your job,” the handler corrected.

Morgan pushed her handler off of the Bag with a petulant shove.

* * *

The tzitzi-ya-ku’s tracks lead Jaq to an area she knew well, dominated by a springy, net-like growth remarkably good at entrapping heavy creatures or, as a random, nonspecific example, a massive capture wagon. She normally tried to avoid it, but her quarry was there - a tall, blue raptor with clawed hands and a narrow face dominated by light-generating flaps where other wyverns might have horns. Her notes said that a tzitzi-ya-ku was docile unless provoked, so Long-Arm Jaq took some time to observe it. Despite its rather blatant lack of both wings and feathers, Jaq could see why it was classified as a bird wyvern; its walk, and the curious bob of its body as it patrolled between curious bites of a picked-over shamos corpse, reminded her of the way pukei-pukei and kulu-ya-ku patrolled their territories. 

Something didn’t smell right on the wind. The pleasant scent of the corals was cut through with something ashen and burnt. Jaq crept forward slowly, drawing her axe and shield as she went, but she kept her weapon flipped back to give herself access to her slinger and its supply of dung pods.

Her prudence was rewarded. When the pink rathian flew in to bellow her challenge, fire already kindled in her teeth and venomous tail stiff in threat, she was met by Jaq’s shots of dung to her sensitive face. The flying wyvern roared in outrage, only to take a third shot of dung, and quickly winged away.

“Just you and me now,” Jaq murmured to the agitated raptor before her. The tzitzi-ya-ku snapped its head in her direction, and the flash-generating flaps on its face came up and started strobing with light.

Morgan might have cursed while diving out of the way of the blinding flash. Jaq just dove.

* * *

Small mercies at least: the Ancient Forest was not low on piles of dung, and Morgan was used to collecting her own. She stopped at every pile to stock up on her personal supply and to start in on filling the Bag’s compartment in between desperately refreshing the lost supplies. They were moving again, finally, at that same slow pace, though now the handler was pushing the wagon to free up one of the cats - a more experienced gatherer and forager - to do the job she was objectively bad at.

Currently, they were moving past a rathian - one of the green ones more common here in the Forest - having a bout over territory with a tobi-kadachi. The flying wyvern was far from having things all its own way; the sinuous tobi-kadachi was much faster, capable of gliding, and more importantly kept unleashing bursts of static electricity that stopped the rathian from taking advantage of its superior size and strength.

“Hunter,” one of Jaq’s crew asked, “shouldn’t we drive them off?”

“Nah,” Morgan answered. “As long as they’re fighting, they’re not our problem. After turf wars like this, one always leaves. If the other wants a piece of us, _then_ we use the dung pod. If it won’t go away, it’s hurt from the fight and easier for us to discourage. If it does go away, no skin off our backs.”

The palico nodded. It made sense.

* * *

Jaq fought with her shield up and her feet moving. After dodging the initial flash she’d rolled to her feet and come at the tzitzi-ya-ku with her paralyzing axe blade. A little great ghirros venom leaked in with every cut to the bird wyvern’s surprisingly tough scales, but the bird’s reach was deceptive. Jaq’s helmet rung when a claw swipe clipped her, half-spinning her away from the tzitzi-ya-ku, and only dropping to the ground on sheer instinct kept her from eating a leaping kick at chest height as a follow-up. Jaq stood up as the bird wyvern started to flash again; she lunged, punching forward with her shield, and connected with the side of the raptor’s face. The beast cried out and fell over, stunned and disoriented, screaming in pain and terror.

Jaq slammed down with her shield, just like in training; punch, _bash_ , backstep, plant your foot -

Half a ton of fanged _something_ hit her from the side like a fist of nails. Jaq went rolling to the ground, bleeding out of holes in her armor from where the new wyvern hit her. She staggered to her feet, shocked and dazed, only to immediately take another hit, this one more like a full-body tackle. 

The support hunter closed her eyes, not to accept her death but because she could hear the tzitzi-ya-ku strobing. The inside of her eyelids glowed bright red for a brief moment, accompanied by a warbling yell of surprise and pain, and the unmistakable sound of the bird wyvern’s heavy footsteps taking it far away from the fight.

This time Jaq managed to pick herself up. She put her fists on her knees, axe still in one hand, shield strapped to her other wrist, as she waited for the bleeding to clot.

On the other side of the springy material was a red, dog-like wyvern looking for all the world like a demon with its skin ripped from it, with a mouth full of fangs and two sets of jagged claws on each forepaw. An odogaron. Jaq remembered Morgan’s first hunt against one, a fight that had ended in a successful capture and Morgan staggering back half-dead into Astera with her medicinal potions used up and some inventive new methods of swearing.

Jaq raised her slinger to use the dung loaded into it.

And then grabbed one of the supply box potions instead, drinking it while unloading her slinger and pocketing the dung. She kept her eyes on the dazed odogaron while she tossed the first potion aside and drank a second, finishing what her natural hunter healing had already started.

“I’m gonna have to chase that thing across the entire Highlands now,” Jaq said, flipping her axe back into the ready position. “You’re going in the Bag.”

* * *

“She’s gonna be done with the hunt by the time we arrive,” the handler predicted, while the Bag moved through the mountains at long last. She and Morgan had stopped to sketch out a different path back to Astera, just in case they didn’t complete their quota in the Coral Highlands. “I wonder how long we’ll have left her waiting.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Morgan said, through the grimace on her face from helping the team minus the handler push the Bag up the slope of the pass. “She’s never hounded a wounded monster back to its nest before. That’s always a - _fffffuuuuck_ this is heavy - whole event.”

* * *

The first-aid potions and most of Jaq’s own potions were gone now, and she was deeply regretting her bravado. The odogaron was fast and fluid, turned on a dime, and had a surprising reach with its lunging bites and slashes. It was all Jaq could do to keep enough axe swings in to occasionally paralyze the beast long enough to heal her wounds, catch her breath, and feel her hate for the thing steadily increase. The arena of springy material had been left far behind, and now the two faced at the base of a cliff, with vigorwasps gently drifting amidst some flowers.

The odogaron breathed heavily, exhausted from its furious assaults and Jaq’s paralyzing counterattacks. But now the beast had built up its resistance, and Jaq was down to her precious mega potions and feeling the burn of exhaustion herself.

The support hunter knelt down and laid the first of her traps; she stepped back from it as the explosive charge beneath it blew a pit into the ground and extended its spring-loaded net. 

“Come on you bastard,” Jaq growled through heavy breaths. “Get into my fucking Bag.”

The odogaron lunged and fell right into the pit, getting trapped immediately. Jaq pulled her tranq bombs and threw one, two, three, directly into the ground in the odogaron’s face, and then stared in momentary disbelief as it continued to thrash and wail.

Long-Arm Jaq hit the skinless thing in the face with her shield at the same time Mao went in with his miniature bone hammer, and then it was still.

After a long minute to catch her breath, Jaq checked the beast’s pulse, hit it with a fourth tranq bomb just in case, and then staggered over to one of the lazily floating vigorwasps. A quick swipe through the liquid bubble beneath it was enough to fill the air with healing vapors that somehow stung and soothed at the same time.

It’d been a long fight. Jaq was dangerously low on supplies, missing half her tranq bombs, and there were holes, rips, and slashes in her armor that were about to be expensive to fix. And there was still the tzitzi-ya-ku to hunt, not to mention guarding both capture sites!

That last bit, at least, was a solvable problem. One that was going to hurt, but solvable.

“I hate this and I hate everything about it,” Jaq muttered. She scooped up a collection of stones to load into her slinger and then went looking for her actual target. If they missed the extraction window then everything was going to go tits-up; another hunter would be given the contract, and Jaq would not get paid.

Next to her, Mao pulled out a flask of healing potion and chugged it for all his felyne life was worth while the two of them limped after the bird wyvern.

* * *

Against all odds, Morgan made it into the Coral Highlands with the Bag and no one dead or injured before the first green capture flare went up. She and the team pointed and exclaimed happily, and then a second green flare lit the sky.

“Two!” Morgan said, bouncing on her heels. “And on her first real hunt in the New World!”

Allie cleared her throat.

“On her first A-list hunt in the New World,” Morgan corrected herself. “Come on, let’s go get them!”

They found Long-Arm Jaq at the bottom of the cliff, with her odogaron sleeping it off in its pit and the tzitzi-ya-ku caught in the web of a shock trap and likewise deeply tranquilized. The support hunter leaned against the base of the cliff, white armored leggings slathered in her own blood and looking the worse for wear. Morgan greeted her with a hearty wave, and got a weak one back. At length, Jaq extracted herself from her comfy spot and limped over to her precious Bag with Mao in tow.

“Hey partner, she bagged a -”

“ _Shut up handler_ ,” Jaq and Morgan said at the same time. The handler huffed and pointedly began helping the Bag’s crew with adjusting the restraints.

“You did amazing,” Morgan murmured. “…You _do_ amazing. I had no idea of how much work you do just getting places. These two are going to be a predator magnet the whole way back, aren’t they? And then there’s still our quota to fill for the supply deliveries.”

Jaq grimaced. “I’ll help -”

“Like hell you will,” Morgan interrupted. “You just had an exhausting hunt. Take a wingdrake home and rest, you’ve earned it.”

“Your job’s not exactly easy either,” Jaq conceded; she bent over and clasped her knees in her hands, still breathing deep. “That odogaron nearly had me. Several times, and then I nearly wasted my trap because it wasn’t as down as I thought it was. I thought I could get everything I needed to do this out of books, but…I couldn’t.”

Morgan cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t object to going with you on a few more of these support missions. I want to know more about your work. We’ve been friends all this time and I…I never bothered to learn. And maybe in exchange I could get you to back me up on some A-list hunts, maybe get you some tougher armor forged that still fits your needs?”

Morgan looked at Jaq. Jaq looked at the monsters. The palicos looked at each other, except for Mao, who was furiously whispering the details of a bet with the handler.

“I’d love to,” Long-Arm Jaq said at last. “Wake me up when you get back. Dinner’s on me.”

“Thank you!” the handler exclaimed.

“I was actually thinking just me and Morgan,” the support hunter clarified.

Mao held out his coinpurse with a contented look. “You heard the lady,” he said to the coins the handler was counting out in her hands with a scowl. “Get in the bag.”


End file.
